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ArchivesRe: Marvin = "famous friend", "marrow famous" ?
in reply to a message by minikui
Marrow is usually a food, either the fatty whitish stuff in bones or a vegetable like a long pumpkin. But that's an obvious nonsense!
I've seen it used as a synonym for friend or companion; my dictionary (Collins - very good!) suggests it might have a Norse origin. Margr apparently means "friendly" in Icelandic! And as a dialect word in English, it's associated with the north-east of England (Durham, Northumberland) and up into Scotland, where you'd expect Norse influence, also meaning "friend" or "fellow-worker". So, even if the mar- element does go back to margr or marrow, the name would still mean "famous friend" rather than "famous vegetable" etc ... the medieval Norse wouldn't have known or cared about vegetable marrows anyway!
Hope that helps.
I've seen it used as a synonym for friend or companion; my dictionary (Collins - very good!) suggests it might have a Norse origin. Margr apparently means "friendly" in Icelandic! And as a dialect word in English, it's associated with the north-east of England (Durham, Northumberland) and up into Scotland, where you'd expect Norse influence, also meaning "friend" or "fellow-worker". So, even if the mar- element does go back to margr or marrow, the name would still mean "famous friend" rather than "famous vegetable" etc ... the medieval Norse wouldn't have known or cared about vegetable marrows anyway!
Hope that helps.
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Replies
The etymology, of course, goes back to the whitish stuff (e.g. Sanskrit majjA is cognate and means the inside of bones or other stuff). It has also seen its day as the whitish stuff that is brain in some branches of Indoeuropean. The inner core or the most salient part are also pretty common semantic extensions.
Do you know the distribution or more fine-grained history of the semantic development to friendly? Is it a Scandinavian or Norse diffusion? Do you know of a similar semantic development elsewhere? In fact, I was expecting more of a friend as in lover (on parallels with heart) or family (on parallels of blood) rather than friend as in fellow-worker.
Do you know the distribution or more fine-grained history of the semantic development to friendly? Is it a Scandinavian or Norse diffusion? Do you know of a similar semantic development elsewhere? In fact, I was expecting more of a friend as in lover (on parallels with heart) or family (on parallels of blood) rather than friend as in fellow-worker.
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Hi! Nice to hear from you.
Isn't it pretty much the same as "mate"? Which can be very personal and sexual, or can be the colleague who hands you the tools, as in a plumber's mate, and has now faded to a general term for a friend, like "pal" or "buddy"?
There's a poem somewhere, about an unsuccessful holiday in the Scottish Borders, where the poet's wife wants to visit Yarrow (in a remote part of the Borders, near Hawick) and he just knows it'll be disappointing and gets out of it, saying "Enough that in our hearts we know There's such a place as Yarrow". And his first rhyme for Yarrow is "my winsome marrow", ie my pretty wife ...
Bone marrow is still "merg" in Afrikaans, and therefore probably in Dutch; but the only metaphorical meaning is your "most salient part", the central point of an issue. My dictionary, and since I'm at work I haven't got a good etymological one to hand, gives Old English 'maerg' (ae should be ash), Old Frisian 'merg' and Old Norse 'mergr'. Which places it firmly in North-Eastern Europe. Collins has a separate entry for marrow = friend, partner: the one I mentioned above. Fifteenth century English, 'marwe', = companion, workmate. Perhaps of Scandinavian origin; cf Icelandic 'margr' = friendly.
The issue there is whether an e in Old Norse can become an a in, presumably, modern Icelandic. And I simply don't know!
Isn't it pretty much the same as "mate"? Which can be very personal and sexual, or can be the colleague who hands you the tools, as in a plumber's mate, and has now faded to a general term for a friend, like "pal" or "buddy"?
There's a poem somewhere, about an unsuccessful holiday in the Scottish Borders, where the poet's wife wants to visit Yarrow (in a remote part of the Borders, near Hawick) and he just knows it'll be disappointing and gets out of it, saying "Enough that in our hearts we know There's such a place as Yarrow". And his first rhyme for Yarrow is "my winsome marrow", ie my pretty wife ...
Bone marrow is still "merg" in Afrikaans, and therefore probably in Dutch; but the only metaphorical meaning is your "most salient part", the central point of an issue. My dictionary, and since I'm at work I haven't got a good etymological one to hand, gives Old English 'maerg' (ae should be ash), Old Frisian 'merg' and Old Norse 'mergr'. Which places it firmly in North-Eastern Europe. Collins has a separate entry for marrow = friend, partner: the one I mentioned above. Fifteenth century English, 'marwe', = companion, workmate. Perhaps of Scandinavian origin; cf Icelandic 'margr' = friendly.
The issue there is whether an e in Old Norse can become an a in, presumably, modern Icelandic. And I simply don't know!
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Thanks a lot for the details. (and nice to hear from you too.) Of late, I have become somewhat interested in the semantic space and the reason I asked was because to me whether a personal or sexual `mate' can shift to become a workmate or colleague (or rather how common the shift is: anything is possible) is ultimately an empirical question.
So I moved my rear end (as they would say on this side of the pond, except less euphemistically) and accessed the OED and the magnifying glasses (with advancing years, the value of anteing up for the electronic edition seems to be increasing) and found:
Oxford English Dictionary claims that this second marrow (attested 15th century onwards instead of the first marrow 8th century onwards) is `Of obscure origin. The localities would seem to point to a Scandinavian origin, but no possible Scandinavian source is known, unless indeed the sense of the English substantive can have been developed from that of Old Norse marg.r (literally `many') friendly, communicative. Phonologically this etymon would be admissible as the word occurs so late that the absence of recorded forms with guttural causes no difficulty.'
Now, OED goes ahead and classifies marrow in the sense of spouse under this second marrow and not under the first! Even though, it is attested from the 16th century, even though one has a term half-marrow, and even though in the 16th and 17th centuries love used to melt one's marrows (as stated in the second subsense of the first marrow)! Curious: but cannot be resolved without more work, which I do not have time for right now.
In any case, I do not think from this that the two marrows are cognate: the -e- -a- problem that you noted is probably real.
Now what does it mean for the name? Well, this site claims that the Welsh Merfyn which possibly means marrow famous is from 9th century. We would now need to know whether the dialectical marrow meaning friend in English of Scandinavian origin which the OED speaks about was already there in Welsh in the 9th century, and whether the Welsh element in the name could refer to it. I remain agnostic as to that without further work.
Incidentally, Wordsworth's Yarrow Unvisited does not have winsome marrow in that stanza, but yes, he does use it elsewhere in the same poem as a rhyme for yarrow. And `winsome marrow' has been reused often.
So I moved my rear end (as they would say on this side of the pond, except less euphemistically) and accessed the OED and the magnifying glasses (with advancing years, the value of anteing up for the electronic edition seems to be increasing) and found:
Oxford English Dictionary claims that this second marrow (attested 15th century onwards instead of the first marrow 8th century onwards) is `Of obscure origin. The localities would seem to point to a Scandinavian origin, but no possible Scandinavian source is known, unless indeed the sense of the English substantive can have been developed from that of Old Norse marg.r (literally `many') friendly, communicative. Phonologically this etymon would be admissible as the word occurs so late that the absence of recorded forms with guttural causes no difficulty.'
Now, OED goes ahead and classifies marrow in the sense of spouse under this second marrow and not under the first! Even though, it is attested from the 16th century, even though one has a term half-marrow, and even though in the 16th and 17th centuries love used to melt one's marrows (as stated in the second subsense of the first marrow)! Curious: but cannot be resolved without more work, which I do not have time for right now.
In any case, I do not think from this that the two marrows are cognate: the -e- -a- problem that you noted is probably real.
Now what does it mean for the name? Well, this site claims that the Welsh Merfyn which possibly means marrow famous is from 9th century. We would now need to know whether the dialectical marrow meaning friend in English of Scandinavian origin which the OED speaks about was already there in Welsh in the 9th century, and whether the Welsh element in the name could refer to it. I remain agnostic as to that without further work.
Incidentally, Wordsworth's Yarrow Unvisited does not have winsome marrow in that stanza, but yes, he does use it elsewhere in the same poem as a rhyme for yarrow. And `winsome marrow' has been reused often.
1